1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a cigarette end container installed in public places such as a waiting room, station platform, etc. and, more particularly, to a cigarette end container suitable for containing cigarette ends automatically conveyed by means of a conveyor.
2. Prior Art
Generally, cigarette end containers are installed in public places for the convenience of cigarette smokers. In most of the conventional cigarette end containers, small bars, a grid, metal meshes or the like are mounted on an opening of the upper part so that cigarette ends are crushed out with the bars or grid and dropped inside, and when reaching a predetermined amount, the cigarette ends are taken out and collected to be finally disposed.
The mentioned type of cigarette end container is also employed for containing the cigarette ends conveyed automatically by means of a conveyor. For example, in game houses such as a pinball (pachinko) house or the like installed with a large number of pinball machines, every game machine is equipped with an ashtray considering a lot of pinball players having the habit of smoking. However, as the ashtray is obliged to be small and filled with cigarette ends in a rather short time, the cigarette ends are collectively conveyed outside by a conveyor to a separate cigarette end container, thus being collected and disposed automatically.
In the mentioned conventional cigarette end container, it is often the case that some of the cigarette ends are not completely crushed out or put out, and due to spread of smoke or fire inside the container, the entire cigarette end container comes to be filled with smoke while emitting an offensive odor around. Such an unpleasant situation should not be ignored not only from the viewpoint of a clean environment in a public place but also from the recent increasing trend of respecting the right to refuse tobacco smoke.
Moreover, in the mentioned automatic conveyance, collection and disposal of cigarette ends, if any cigarette end should not be put out definitely, it may be a problem in the aspect of prevention against disaster, and there is a possibility of inviting an accident. Therefore, in case of installing a cigarette end container particularly in any public place, it has been conventional to incorporate a water tank inside the cigarette end container so that any cigarette end may be put out by dropping it into the water tank. This conventional manner of putting out the cigarette ends is certainly effective in the early stage. However, because the cigarette ends float on the surface of the water without sinking, a problem exists in that cigarette ends dropped frequently one after another in the cigarette end container come to be accumulated on the floating cigarette ends, while percolation of water into the cigarette ends above the water is reduced, eventually resulting in a reduction in the putting out performance.
Further, because capacity of the cigarette end container is reduced as much as the water quantity in the water tank, it becomes necessary to employ a container of relatively large size. Therefore, another problem exists in that it is quite difficult to set or place such a relatively large size cigarette end container in a very narrow limited space where a large number of playing machines such as pinball (pachinko) machine are densely aligned.
Furthermore, when collecting cigarette ends in the water tank, because components such as nicotine, tar, etc. may dissolve and stick to the inside wall of the water tank, and cigarette ends themselves absorbing the water are dissolved into pieces, a further problem exists in that cleaning of the water tank is not always simple but rather troublesome. In particular, every water tank filled with cigarette ends must be replaced with a cleaned water tank very carefully, which gives not only a lot of stress to the cleaning worker but also something unpleasant to the players playing near the cigarette end container.